The Friday Mixer: Brain-Only Is the New Flex
The best way to "own" an argument is still to author it ourselves.
🍸 What’s the one thing you should always bring to a cocktail party? The answer's simple: something interesting to talk about. So here’s The Friday Mixer, a quick weekly snippet from the world around us to make you a little more prepared to spur conversation at this weekend’s soirees.
A brain trust of scientists and theorists from MIT and Wellesley recently dropped a 200-page study that confirms what we can probably guess: writing with AI lowers our cognitive engagement with the content we produce and diminishes our ability to learn from the act of creation. On the flip side, when we rely solely on our minds to do the heavy (pencil) lifting, we experience “elevated front-parietal alpha connectivity” (and other stuff like that) resulting in greater processing, recall, and ownership over the content we author. Which is all to say, you’re going to want to wear an “I’m Brain-Only” shirt to your next cocktail party.
Read on for some talking points to make this weekend’s conversations a little more interesting. (Pro tip: 200 pages is a lot, but the Intro, Discussion, and Conclusion sections will get you on your way.)
🫒 The Garnish
“The hardest part of writing is knowing what to write.” - Syd Field
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